Unlocking The Genetic Secrets Of Autism

Physical exercise can reduce a genetic predisposition to obesity by an average of 40 percent, a new study showed.The research challenges the notion that an inherited propensity to obesity is impossible to overcome and boosts the case for the benefit of more exercise for anyone looking to shed some weight.The study, published in this week's Public Library of American Science Medicine journal, is based on examination of 20,430 people living in Norwich, Britain.

An autism study is built on a foundation of bad science.

Nasal inhalation of oxytocin, a hormone linked with romantic love and mother-to-baby bonding, may help people with autism become more sociable, according to a French study.A team led by Angela Sirigu of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon, France, tried the experiment after previous research found that blood levels of oxytocin are low among individuals with autism, a condition that afflicts social behaviour.Oxytocin was tested among 13 patients suffering on high-functioning autism patients or with Asperger's syndrome.

A woman's chance of having a child with autism increases substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study found.

It's a common claim that health care would be more efficient and cheaper if not for third party payment.  Often, yes, but often these claims are overstated, especially when the link between treatment and improvement is murky. 

1. If you are in a liquidity trap, is your exchange rate indeterminate?  Under what conditions?  Along what range?2. Does it matter if the other currency is also in a liquidity trap?3. What will result from the intersection of two possible trends: insistence on a greater equality in health care outcomes, and the development of new technologies -- some at the genetic level for the individual -- which will lead to a greater inequality of health care outcomes?

Medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday withdraw a 1998 study linking autism with innoculation against three childhood illnesses, a paper that caused a major storm and an enduring backlash against vaccination.The British journal said it was acting in the light of an ethics judgement last week by Britain's General Medical Council against Andrew Wakefield, the study's lead researcher."We fully retract this paper from the published record," The Lancet's editors said in a statement published online.

The major British medical journal formally retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.